Double-Helix PSF for 3D Imaging Microscopy

The Double-Helix (DH) PSF engineering provides a high resolution in the longitudinal direction for 3D imaging. It can be produced by adding a phase mask with vortices in the pupil plane [Ginni Grover et al., Opt. Exp. 2012]. VirtualLab Fusion provides a fast and convenient way to calculate the DH PSFs for small defocuses of a high-NA microscopy system. This use case demonstrates the DH-PSFs have obvious changes with a defocus of ~130 nm.